AT&T pines for a standardized smartphone OS, eyes Symbian (Updated)

AT&T sees a future full of smartphones. But to help the industry avoid …

With smartphones successfully commandeering the spotlight from their less capable predecessors this year, AT&T has decided to get serious about bringing some standards to the market. Competition is heating up, and consumers are demanding more powerful phones with capabilities that extend far beyond the box they ship in. To help fill demand, AT&T is planning to to standardize low-end devices on a single mobile OS and roll out a line of branded smartphones.

AT&T believes that smartphones will become the majority of devices that connect to its network by 2014, and it's probably right. The smartphone market is seeing strong growth (though slightly slower this quarter), thanks to new efforts like Google's Android OS and renewed competition from BlackBerry maker RIM. Apple's $200 and $300 iPhones have seen remarkable success, too, recently knocking Motorola's RAZR from its perch as the best-selling phone in the US (despite the RAZR's long-time status as a "free-with-contract" phone). But to avoid running smartphones aground in the same barren, incompatible development landscape that the current dumbphone is stifled by, AT&T wants to gets its OS ducks in a row.

Speaking at the Symbian Partner Event in San Francisco, Roger Smith, director of next generation services, data product realization at AT&T, told an audience that Symbian is "a very credible and likely candidate" for a new line of AT&T-branded smartphones, according to Yahoo News. While AT&T has every intention of carrying the same smartphones like BlackBerry, iPhone, and Windows Mobile devices it does now, the company wants to simplify its support structure while simultaneously offering devices powered by more standardized and extensible platforms.

Seth Bloom, an AT&T spokesperson, confirmed to Ars Technica that the company "has no plans to standardize on one platform for our smart devices. But we have said that we see potential benefit in standardizing our low-end devices on a single mobile OS, though we have not finalized our plans to do so."

AT&T's announcement is perfectly timed, due to Nokia's finalized acquisition of the Symbian platform. Symbian has been used for some time on a variety of popular international phones, including Nokia's own S60 line and phones from Sony Ericsson. With this acquisition of the entire platform, though, Nokia plans to open source Symbian, making it a much more service-agnostic choice for AT&T versus Android, Google's open source mobile phone OS. Android had developmental help from a variety of hardware manufacturers like Samsung, HTC, and LG, and already offers advanced functionality like the application marketplace. But Google's OS has been criticized by some carriers and manufacturers as being too Google-centric, tying too closely into services like Gmail and Google contact syncing.

Symbian probably won't be AT&T's only choice for branded smartphones, though. "We want to give our wireless customers maximum choice – in innovative devices, applications, operating systems, and more. One way to maximize customer choice," Bloom continued, "is to begin to reduce fragmentation in the wireless OS environment. That is why we are a member of the Symbian Foundation. That fragmentation puts a heavy burden on wireless carriers, handset makers, and especially apps developers, who have to create for multiple operating systems and sometimes for multiple versions of the same operating system."

AT&T has not yet announced who would be building its branded phones or how soon any of this brave new standardized world will materialize, but HTC is a likely option among brand-able manufacturers. The carrier is definitely aiming for using open platforms, though, and has high hopes for the potential that standardized phones can provide for revenue and third-party developers. Applications will be easier to develop, and AT&T sees a bright future for mobile data services that could even "out-value" the web by harnessing location-based features and advertising. Instead of trying to wring out more revenue from subscribers during an economic downturn, new applications could facilitate online banking or shopping, with advertising and transaction fees being a source of pie-sliced revenue for all parties involved.

The carrier's moves to offer a branded line of powerful, extensible smartphones and standardize its low-end devices will likely have repercussions throughout the industry. Entrenched manufacturers like Motorola and Nokia are scrambling to catch up and compete in the new smartphone market, and if other manufacturers have not already reassessed their software strategies, now is a great time. Perhaps most importantly from a consumer perspective, multiple strong mobile OS platforms will result in better choices all around.